Notorious 1946 - Hitchcock's visual masterpiece

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IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern

"One of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest films, Notorious features the director at his devilishly elegant, self-assured best. The film's smooth veneer largely creates its visceral impact; lurking beneath the gloss are dealings of the most grotesque sort, their execution made all the more insidious by their sophisticated guise. Aside from containing one of Hitchcock's most famous MacGuffins, the uranium ore, Notorious boasts some of his most famous camerawork, most notably the gorgeous tracking shot during Sebastian's party that takes the viewer from the top of a staircase to Alicia's hand, clenched around the key that will lead her to the uranium ore. The camera moves with the quiet intimacy of an unobserved party guest, almost serpentine in its journey. Similarly ingenious is Hitchcock's use of point-of-view shots, particularly that of Alicia's waking up with a hangover and watching Devlin walk toward her as the camera spins 180 degrees. Seeing through Alicia's eyes, the audience sympathizes with her, making the character one of Hitchcock's most full-blooded and enduring heroines. It goes without saying that the success of Alicia's characterization is in no small part due to Ingrid Bergman's performance; tragic, lovelorn, and marked by logical cynicism, her portrayal of Alicia was one of the best of Bergman's career. She was ably supported by Cary Grant and Claude Rains, the former going against his likeable, effortlessly charismatic persona to play an initially charmless man with morals as questionable as the heroine's are supposed to be. Rains, paired with Bergman again after Casablanca, makes Sebastian into one of the film's more sympathetic characters; it is a mark of Rains' ability that when Sebastian turns to climb the stairs in the film's closing scene, we feel real terror for him. That Sebastian's fate is the result of both his own manipulations of others and his heart's manipulations of himself is at the center of the film's true MacGuffin: masquerading as a Cold War thriller, Notorious is one of the screen's classic black romances." - www.allmovie.com

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The Philadelphia story 1940 - Hepburn's spectacular comeback, Stewart's Academy Award

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IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: George Cukor
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, Ruth Hussey, John Howard, Roland Young

"Playwright Philip Barry reportedly based the central character of The Philadelphia Story on Katharine Hepburn's brittle public persona, so it should be little surprise that she plays the part so well. The film is a quick-witted translation of the play, essentially a parlor drama with witty, Oscar Wilde-like banter and glib repartee from nearly every actor. There are moments of rare beauty in the dialogue, even if director George Cukor rarely uses them to give the film more visual flair or energy. The story both spoofs and plays sly homage to Clifford Odets' earnest socialist dramas, in which kind-hearted socialites learn to love and admire the working poor - except that, in The Philadelphia Story, Hepburn turns her back on the working-class hero and returns to her own kind, the aristocratic, debonair, completely irresistible Cary Grant (who does a wonderful job of being... Cary Grant). The aristocrats are well-skewered by the delightful screenplay, and James Stewart is excellent as the cynical but smitten reporter, in a performance that won him his only Academy Award. Donald Ogden Stewart (no relation to Jimmy) also copped an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. The Philadelphia Story was remade in 1956 with a Cole Porter musical score as High Society." - www.allmovie.com

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His girl Friday 1940 - One of the fastest talking movies ever made

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IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart

"The second screen version of the Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur play The Front Page, His Girl Friday changed hard-driving newspaper reporter Hildy Johnson from a man to a woman, transforming the story into a scintillating battle of the sexes. It's doubtful that one could find a movie as fast-paced as Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday, and next-to-impossible to find a film of the period more laced with sexual electricity. Decades after its release, the comedy-thriller adapted from Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's play The Front Page holds up as a masterpiece of pacing and performance, and even manages a few healthy swipes at some of officialdom's sacred cows. At the time, His Girl Friday was also a piece of groundbreaking cinema for the rules it broke: Hawks' version added an element of sexual tension that was about the only thing missing from the original play and the 1931 film version, in which main characters Walter Burns and Hildy Johnson are men engaged in a symbiotic/exploitative professional relationship. Hawks transmuted Hildy Johnson into the persona of Rosalind Russell, who was entering her prime as an archetype of the ambitious, energetic woman. Coupled with Cary Grant's cheerful nonchalance as the manipulative editor Walter Burns, the material - which was fairly scintillating on its own terms - took on a fierce sexual edge that made the resulting film a 92-minute exercise in eroticism masquerading as a comic thriller. Russell may never have had a better role than Hildy Johnson; she became a screen symbol for the intelligent, aggressive female reporter, decades before Candice Bergen's star turn as television's Murphy Brown. Amid all of the jockeying for superiority, and the sparring between Grant and Russell - which, in many ways, anticipates the jousting between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in Hawks' own The Big Sleep, made four years later - His Girl Friday found room to enhance some of the issues from the original play, including cynicism about government, the justice system and freedom of the press.
His Girl Friday may well be the fastest comedy of the 1930s, with kaleidoscope action, instantaneous plot twists, and overlapping dialogue. And if you listen closely, you'll hear a couple of 'in' jokes, one concerning Cary Grant's real name (Archie Leach), and another poking fun at Ralph Bellamy's patented 'poor sap' screen image. Subsequent versions of The Front Page included Billy Wilder's 1974 adaptation, which restored Hildy Johnson's manhood in the form of Jack Lemmon, and 1988's Switching Channels, which cast Burt Reynolds in the Walter Burns role and Kathleen Turner as the Hildy Johnson counterpart." - www.allmovie.com

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Gunga Din 1939 - The ultimate motion picture adventure

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IMDB rating: 7,6

Director: George Stevens
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Sam Jaffe

"George Stevens' Gunga Din was not only the best of Hollywood's forays into colonialist adventure yarns, it served as the blueprint for many action-adventure movies for years after its release. It is a tribute to Stevens' direction and the uniformly superb cast that the film was a rousing success upon its release, and has endured as a popular favorite for decades since. Americans have always had problematic relationships with stories of British colonialism, but they also love a good adventure yarn, and the usual Hollywood compromise is to ignore the particulars, hold one's nose at the worst elements of subjugation, and just tell the story. That was the approach of the five screenwriters (including Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur and the uncredited William Faulkner) involved in the project, and director Stevens adhered to their work to the letter in telling Rudyard Kipling's story of life, love, and adventure on the frontier of the Indian subcontinent. In the film, the British army is a peace-keeping force, protecting the native populace from a murderous cult of religious fanatics who kill anyone in their way, including their own people. If the paternalistic attitude of the British seems heavy-handed, the oversight is more than outweighed by the savagery of the characters they're fighting. The pacing includes room for ample roughhousing, some of it bordering on slapstick, and rich character development. The actors play their parts as though they were born for them: Victor McLaglen, in particular, cuts a surprisingly dashing figure as Sergeant McChesney; the actor was nearly a decade away from settling into the more comical and jovial character roles that he played in John Ford's films. Cary Grant displays a larcenous side to his screen persona which in many ways anticipates his most compelling dramatic performance, in None But the Lonely Heart. Ironically, for a film that introduced author Kipling to the mass public than any other adaptation of his work, Gunga Din ran afoul of the sensibilities of the author's widow, who objected to the scenes depicting an unnamed, Kipling-like journalist, and those shots were cut at her request after the first run of the movie. These scenes would remain unseen until the late 1980s, when they were restored under the auspices of Turner Entertainment, the company that purchased the RKO film library.
Originally slated to be directed by Howard Hawks, Gunga Din was taken out of Hawks' hands when the director proved to be too slow during the filming of Bringing Up Baby. His replacement was George Stevens, who proved to be slower and more exacting than Hawks had ever been!" - www.allmovie.com

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Holiday 1930 - The first film version of the classic Philip Barry comedy

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IMDB rating: 7,0

Director: Edward H. Griffith
Main Cast: Ann Harding, Mary Astor, Edward Everett Horton, Robert Ames, Hedda Hopper

"Ann Harding and Robert Ames starred in the first screen adaptation of Philip Barry's play -- remade eight years later in a much more famous version with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, directed by George Cukor. This version is a little closer to the source, in terms of the nature of some of the characters, and has a charm all of its own, especially in the Oscar-nominated performance by Harding, an actress who deserves to be better remembered than she is. The supporting characters, especially Edward Everett Horton (who was also in the remake) as Nick Potter, are a little less 'housebroken' than they were in the 1938 version, and the result is some edges and sparks that didn't show up in the Cukor version, for all of its virtues. On the down side, the movie was done in 1930, early in the sound era, and at times displays the somewhat static visual nature of most talkies from that period." - www.allmovie.com

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The eagle and the hawk 1933 - A forgotten anti-war aviation

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IMDB rating: 7,2

Director: Stuart Walker
Main Cast: Fredric March, Cary Grant, Jack Oakie, Carole Lombard, Guy Standing

"A stirring and accomplished anti-war film, The Eagle and the Hawk is a little-known gem that deserves greater recognition. Although Eagle does have its flaws, including a slight tendency to get on a soapbox about its worthy message, it's told with compassion and skill and is a thoroughly captivating film. Screenwriters Seton Miller and Bogart Rogers have deftly laced the drama with some genuine humor and wit, yet haven't let it interfere with the seriousness of the picture. Seemingly inspired by the story they have adapted, they have produced work that is top drawer and emotionally affecting. Stuart Walker directs carefully; he doesn't imbue the material with a strong directorial vision, but he serves the material very nicely and creates atmosphere and tension that add to the overall effect. The action sequences have drama aplenty, but he can also play up the more romantic moments admirably. Eagle's finest asset, however, is its strong cast. Though the love story involving her is perhaps the film's weakest aspect, Carole Lombard is such a magnificent figure and brings such personality and charm to the film that one scarcely cares about how it all fits in with the rest of the show. Cary Grant, in an early part, is still defining his screen persona; it's mostly there, but there are enough slight rough edges to surprise and delight. Fredric March is simply aces in the lead role, grabbing hold of the drama and running for all it's worth. And Jack Oakie's humor makes the character's ultimate fate the more devastating." - www.allmovie.com

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Only angels have wings 1939 - An overlooked film in Hawks' career but it made Rita Hayworth a star

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031762/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell

"Only Angels Have Wings exemplifies the complex, taciturn male bravado common to the films of Howard Hawks. Unfairly lumped into the genre of the airborne drama, it is one of Hawks' more neglected films. An experienced pilot himself, Hawks based Angels on real people and events from his time spent on the airfields; his brother was killed in a plane crash. Cary Grant plays the courageous, fatalistic lead, and Jean Arthur is the typical Hawksian heroine, strong with a subversive, gender-bending edge. Supporting player Rita Hayworth became a major Hollywood star after Angels. Scripted by Jules Furthman from a story by Hawks, Only Angels Have Wings is a treasure trove of terse, pithy dialogue: our favorite scene occurs when, upon discovering that he's about to die, Thomas Mitchell says he's often wondered how he'd react to imminent death-and, now that death is but a few moments away, he'd rather that no one else be around to witness his reaction. Though sometimes laid low by obvious miniatures, the aerial scenes in Only Angels Have Wings are by and large first-rate, earning a first-ever "best special effects" Oscar nomination for Roy Davidson and Edwin C. Hahn. The film would receive a wartime update as 1942's The Flying Tigers." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/only-angels-have-wings-v36481/

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Holiday 1938 - Grant and Hepburn make the magic

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0030241/
IMDB rating: 7,9

Director: George Cukor
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Doris Nolan, Lew Ayres, Edward Everett Horton, Binnie Barnes

"Both film versions of Phillip Barry's stage comedy Holiday have their merits, but the 1938 version has the added advantage of supercharged star power.
George Cukor was arguably the best and most consistent director of sophisticated romantic comedies in the golden age of the 1930s and 1940s. Literate, thoughtful, and refined, his efforts in the genre were blueprints for all who followed, and Holiday was no exception. Next to The Philadelphia story, the film is perhaps his most-loved comedy. An enjoyable screen version of the same Phillip Barry play had been produced just eight years earlier, starring Mary Astor and Robert Ames, but Cukor improved on it in just about every way. The only element in which the remake does not improve on the original is in the casting of Hepburn's alcoholic younger brother; charming though Lew Ayres is in the 1938 film, he is still outclassed by Monroe Owsley in Holiday 1930. Katharine Hepburn managed to temporarily defray her 'box office poison' onus when Holiday proved to be a success; alas, her next film, Bringing up baby (which reteamed her with Grant), was a financial bust, compelling her to return to Broadway - where she made a spectacular comeback in another Philip Barry play, The Philadelphia Story.
This is the second of three times that Cukor worked with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. Hepburn was Cukor's favorite star, and he was instrumental in her success as an actress ever since her first leading role, in the director's 1932 film Bill of divorcement." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/holiday-v22716

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Bringing up baby 1938 - The quintessential screwball comedy

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029947/
IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: Howard Hawks
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, Charles Ruggles, Barry Fitzgerald, May Robson

"Bringing up baby is the quintessential screwball comedy, and one of the crowning comic achievements in the careers of director Howard Hawks and stars Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. It may also be one of the defining examples of comedy feature film at its purest and most basic. At the time of its release, it seemed to close out the screwball genre: the portrayals in film inflated and punctured an array of movie (and social) stereotypes in as fine a style had ever been accomplished. The screwball comedy originated in the depths of the Great Depression as a reaction to the despair of everyday life, as well as to the publicized antics of wealthy fops and heiresses who seemed oblivious to the fact that people were literally starving to death. The idle rich were the genre's essential ingredient, from satirical pre-screwball efforts such as Zoltan Korda's Cash (an especially offbeat example since it was made in England) to pioneering Hollywood screwball comedies like Gregory La Cava's My man Godfrey. As time passed, however, other targets became acceptable, including intellectual 'eggheads' and eccentric members of officialdom. Bringing up baby skewers all of them and more - including over-zealous psychiatrists and blustery, pretentious upper-class stuffed shirts - hitting the bullseye with each one. Apart from its acting, pacing, and verbal acrobatics (an essential element of any Howard Hawks talking picture), Bringing up baby is a masterful achievement precisely because it distills its diverse ingredients down to the characters. The plot, such as it is, deals with mistakes and mistaken identities (right down to heiress Hepburn's pet leopard) but is really about nothing - absolutely nothing, to paraphrase a standard articulated by Jerry Seinfeld in the 1990s. Even the one main element of the 'story' - the search for a missing dinosaur bone belonging to the museum where Cary Grant's character works - is such an obvious, ridiculous comic device, a comedic equivalent to Hitchcock's 'MacGuffin' concept. The screwball comedy was never quite the same, nor was any filmmaker or cast able to build a film on such slight material so successfully ever again." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/bringing-up-baby-v7142

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Topper 1937 - The film that set the standard for supernatural comedies

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029682/?ref_=nv_sr_1
IMDB rating: 7,4

Director: Norman Z. McLeod
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Constance Bennett, Roland Young, Billie Burke, Eugene Pallette, Arthur Lake, Hedda Hopper

"By 1937, producer Hal Roach was hoping to wean himself away from the Laurel & Hardy-Our Gang slapstick on which he had built his studio's reputation by delving into the 'screwball comedy' genre. Roach selected the racy Thorne Smith fantasy novel Topper for adaptation, and the result was one of the most endearingly funny films of the decade, inspiring controversy on its 1937 release. The gentle, whimsical comedy about friendly ghosts was scorned by some for morbidness and for indulging in the supernatural. In fact, Topper was the first feature film about ghosts that succeeded both at the box office and among critics. A husband and wife killed in a car accident return as spirits, visible only to their friend Cosmo Topper. The ghosts are prone to misbehaving but are well-intentioned and helpful. Every Hollywood ghost story that followed owed something to Topper's clever spirit and fanciful imaginings.
Though special effects abound in Topper, most of the humor derives from the embarrassed reactions of Roland Young as he tries to fend off the flirtatious advances of the ghostly Marion and the benignly strongman tactics of the spectral George. Adding to the fun are Eugene Pallette as a flustered house detective and Arthur Lake as a pratfalling bellboy. The musical score by longtime Hal Roach composer Marvin Hatley is perfectly attuned to the zany goings-on (including snatches of background music from Roach's earlier Laurel and Hardy comedies), while Hoagy Carmichael appears briefly on screen to introduce the film's signature tune, 'Old Man Moon'.
Inspired by the Thorne Smith novel The Jovial Ghosts, Topper was a hit that remained popular for more than a generation, inspiring the sequels Topper Takes a Trip and Topper Returns and a 1950s television series. Cary Grant, Constance Bennett, and Roland Young are the three stars, with Young getting an Oscar nomination." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/topper-v50462/

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The awful truth 1937 - One of the best screwball comedies of the 30's

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028597/
IMDB rating: 8,0

Director: Leo McCarey
Main Cast: Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Ralph Bellamy, Joyce Compton, Molly Lamont

"One of the greatest screwball comedies of the thirties, The awful truth is arguably the archetypal example of this influential genre. The plot - in which a gorgeous, sophisticated couple (played by Cary Grant and Irene Dunne) divorce, dabble with various Mr. and Miss Wrongs, and get back together again - is the screwball formula distilled to its essence. Also exemplary are the film's opulent sets and costumes, and Grant's and Dunne's fabulously witty dialogue. Like the featured couple in most screwball comedies, Jerry and Lucy Warriner are made for each other, a fact reinforced mostly by their sublime bickering (and the supporting characters' futile attempts to keep up with them). Based on a stage play by Arthur Richman that had been filmed twice before, Vina Delmar's script ably supplies the two stars with choice barbs, and Leo McCarey's confident direction keeps the action moving from set piece to hilarious set piece. Grant and Dunne are, unsurprisingly, brilliant as the warring Warriners, though special mention must also be made of some of the actors playing their hapless suitors: Ralph Bellamy as the hayseed Dan Leeson (Bellamy would later play nearly the same role in Howard Hawks' His girl Friday); Alexander d'Arcy as the hilariously insipid Armand Duvalle; and Joyce Compton as the incomparable Dixie Belle Lee. Nominated for six Oscars in 1938, the film walked away with only one, for McCarey." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-awful-truth-v3472

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She done him wrong 1933 - The trademark Mae West movie

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024548/
IMDB rating: 6,5

Director: Lowell Sherman
Main Cast: Mae West, Cary Grant, Owen Moore, Gilbert Roland, Rochelle Hudson

"She Done Him Wrong is the best example of the screen persona of Mae West and why it has endured as a icon of comic sexuality. Adapted from West's stage play, the story is secondary to West's charismatic one-liners and simmering seductiveness. The supporting cast appears to be there just for show, including West's nominal co-star, Cary Grant, whom Paramount was then attempting to build into a leading man. Paramount consistently selected material for Grant that failed to showcase his talents, and he did not achieve major box-office status until after leaving the studio in 1935.
Mae West's first starring film literally saved Paramount Pictures from bankruptcy. It would remain the best of her feature films, most of which were severely watered down by the Production Code (whose renewed stringency of 1933 was brought about in great part by West herself). She Done Him Wrong was based on West's own stage play, Diamond Lil, which ran on Broadway for 97 weeks. West sings 'Frankie and Johnny', 'I Like a Man Who Takes His Time', and 'I Wonder Where My Easy Rider's Gone'. She Done Him Wrong holds the unusual distinction of being nominated for an Academy Award as Best Picture without being nominated in any other category." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/she-done-him-wrong-v44218

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I'm no angel 1933 - The divine Miss West's most successful picture

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024166/
IMDB rating: 7,1

Director: Wesley Ruggles
Main Cast: Mae West, Cary Grant, Gregory Ratoff

"Mae West's second starring vehicle, I'm No Angel should have been as big and bawdy a success as West's earlier She Done Him Wrong, but by late 1933 the censors were beginning to have their way with Hollywood. Several of the more ribald (and more hilarious) elements of the film were toned down - not least of which was the title, which was supposed to have been It Ain't No Sin.
West's reputation for tweaking the noses of film censors was well-established by the time she made I'm No Angel, her second consecutive outing opposite the luminous Cary Grant. The two had made She Done Him Wrong earlier that year, and in I'm No Angel West does Grant wrong again, to hilarious effect. West plays her typical floozy, a carnival dancer, who escapes a murder charge and cozies her way into high society, where she famously tells her maid: 'Beulah, peel me a grape'. Eventually, she wins Grant, then drops him and sues him for breach of contract. Rarely has a more intelligent, sexually powerful, and dominant female figure been seen on screen, and West is at her sizzling comic peak. Already a major entertainment figure, West rode the popularity of I'm No Angel to greater notoriety, but she never again teamed up with a male superstar so successfully. West's movies were among those most responsible for bringing a new era of censorship after the early 1930s." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/im-no-angel-v80247

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